Miniatures: It’s a Small World
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A miniature house, belonging to the Pastor Martin Kienecker family of Bielefeld, Germany, now a family heirloom.
While in the course of my 35-year career as a diplomat, I managed to acquire various souvenirs from my various sojourns, I found out that I had been unconsciously collecting tiny things that would qualify for a museum of miniatures.
What is it about miniatures that attracts us to them? I guess it is the same impulse that drives us to value children, who are deemed to be miniature copies of the adults they will become someday. Such words as “cute” and “mignon” seem to be tailor-made for them.
From the book Miniature Antiques by Jean Latham (London, 1972), we learn that the word “miniature” derives from the Italian word miniatura, meaning a small painting (the first letters of manuscripts were usually designed in red and gold and had a small picture painted in vermilion and gold leaf inside the letter). The Filipino-Spanish genre of letras y figuras derives from this tradition.
The Philippines in miniature, as depicted in Letras y Figuras by artists like Damian Domingo.
Miniatures include not only pictures, portraits and small replicas of big things, but also dolls, buttons, thimbles, toys, keychains, rings, jewelry and tiny pottery or porcelain. The words “toy” and “tyke” appear to come from the same Dutch word tuyg; what we would call llavera or keyholder in Spanish. A lady chatelaine (or mistress of the castle) would probably toy with the keys in her pocket or hanging from her waist, explaining this etymology.
The Christmas creche or belen in Spanish is but a portrayal in miniature of Christ’s Nativity. The Christ Child must be the original child miniature, which spread from Egypt and Rome to Byzantium and the beautiful palettes of Italian, French, Flemish, German and Spanish artists. The Spanish who came to colonize us came with their miniature portrayal of Christ as a child, the Santo Niño de Praga, which their queen had honored from her native Bohemian land.
Santo Niño de Cebu, the miniature Christ Child, par excellence
Today the Santo Niño is clad in every attire, from a policeman’s uniform to a basketball player’s garb. Dwarfs are also in our folklore, not a far step from this modern day idolatry. Malacañang once had an image of the Santo Niño in its reception area, preceding the Presidential portraits and the lordly Music Room
As a child, I was beguiled by the life-size Nativity which the Belgian nuns set up every Christmas at the Paco Church of Santo Sepulcro. My grandmother in turn would set up her miniature version in her living room, with tiny mirrors representing pools of water and blue crepe paper skies studded with silver stars. The focus would be the tiny Christ Child in the manger.
Filipinos have a special kinship to tiny things, as in the votive idols of wax or metals sold in church porches. Rizal’s novels describe the many toys sold at fairs and fiestas.
Papier-mache dolls must have been as popular then as they are now in the tourist trade of Paete, Rizal. This craft must have been influenced by the Mexicans, who still produce works of art in this medium to this day. Their versions are articulated papier-mache dolls from Guanajuato that are individually named (e.g., Isabel, Maria, Lolita, etc.) and are typically in a saucy spread-eagle pose that is both childlike and seductive.
Paete papier-mache miniature horses and Filipino prototypes.
The book Arts and Crafts of Mexico by Chloe Sayer (San Francisco, 1990) says that “Mexican folk toys are among the most abundant and imaginative in the world. Fashioned from a vast range of materials, they reveal, possibly more than other crafts, the ingenuity and inventiveness of their creators”(P.105). Indeed, they work in every possible medium, such as clay and ceramics, horn, straw, palm weave, wrought iron, gourds, tin and wood.
Toy miniatures have an instructive purpose in Mexican culture as they teach children about their heritage and show how these objects are used in daily life, aside from stimulating their imagination. It is something that today’s youth, weaned on TV, videos, YouTube, Tiktok and the detritus of social media would consider completely out of their sphere.
Female dolls and their male counterparts (such as GI Joe) were once used in the West as Victorian or early 20th century role models for. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as the Royal Museum in Bangkok both recall the abundance of toys with which royal children were amused, cosseted and pampered. The doll’s house was also a didactic tool in well-to-do houses and widely echoed down the social scale.
My personal experience in this sphere consisted of discovering a scale model of an Art Deco house in Pi Y Margall, Sampaloc near the University of Santo Tomas. The house was due for demolition, but my purchase of the house model ensured that its façade is now preserved in the Museo Pambata on Roxas Boulevard, Manila (I loaned it for the edification of children). I was told that the house had actually contained miniature furniture, which its owners brought to the United States, possibly to amuse their offspring there.
The Leoncio House in miniature, owned by the author and currently on loan at the Museo Pambata, in Manila.
It is interesting to know that aside from its Shoe Museum and other curiosities, Marikina City has a Book Museum cum Ethnology Center on 201 Southeast Dao Street, Marikina Heights. The latter has one of the smallest books in the world: the Lord’s Prayer in seven languages, printed in seven languages and measuring 3.3 mm squared. It also has the smallest tablet from Sichuan, China and a miniature edition of The Little Prince by St-Exupery. How this squares with also housing the first James Dean Café in Manila is beyond me.
Compared with these professional collections, mine is literally a drop of water in what must be a huge sea: toy soldiers, Buddhist votive metal offerings, key rings, refrigerator magnets, snuff boxes, tiny cups and saucers, sake cups, glass mice, cameos, rings, matryoshki from Russia. One day, the Museo Pambata might be interested in this collection, but last I heard, even they have no more space for tiny objects.
A career diplomat of 35 years, Ambassador Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr. served as Philippine Ambassador to South Africa (2003-2009) and Italy (2011-2014), his last posting before he retired. He is now engaged in writing and traveling, and is dedicated to cultural heritage projects.
More articles by Ambassador Virgilio Reyes, Jr.
